Victory?
by Shoequeeny
Summary: About how they feel once they win. Rachel's POV. My first story!! So don't hurt me!


VICTORY? 

My name is Rachel. And I had just won a war against a race of parasitic slugs. Pretty cool, hey? You'd think so. Actually, at this point you'd think I was cheering and drinking champagne. Well, I wasn't. I was shopping which, normally, in my opinion, is better than any of those things any day. I mean I'm pretty sure that I hold the record for the world's greatest shopper and generally I live up to my title. But not today. 

There were massive sale signs everywhere and what I should have been doing was running around there buying every bargain I could see. But, I wasn't. I was walking around a very unhappy shopper. And I never thought I would say that. I guess, that after fighting an intergalactic war bargain hunting just doesn't have the same appeal. The thing was though, I'd still loved shopping the whole time we, the Animorphs, had been fighting. Before I continue with my in-depth look at the reason I couldn't bring myself to have a Neiman-Marcus shopping spree I should probably tell you something about how we were fighting an intergalactic war. 

It all started about three years ago. A group of us took a short-cut through a construction site one night. The group was Cassie, my best friend, Jake, my cousin, Marco, a guy I knew as Jake's best friend and who I basically hated, Tobias, I guy I barely knew and me, a person I don't even recognize any more. If you look back I don't really recognize any of us. But that night the only thing we were worried about was the axe-murderer you always worry about when you walk through abandoned dumps. We were certainly not worrying about a race of evil space slugs, the yeerks, who were set on world-domination. 

But that all changed when an Andalite fighter crashed right in front us and we met a real, live Andalite who changed our lives. I still haven't decided if it was in a good way or if it was in a bad way. You see this real, live alien Andalite was, we thought, the only survivor from their dome ship which had been destroyed in orbit. Elfangor, the alien guy, decided we deserved a chance and gave us the power to morph into any animal. Since then, we'd fought them. Some of us willing, me, some of not so willing, Marco. It had been bad. You think we'd be heroes. Maybe we were. But I always thought heroes never took lives, never got injured and never regretted what they'd done. If that's what a hero was then we certainly weren't heroes. We'd finally beaten the yeerks by sending a pulse from their mother ship that was specialized to an exact frequency that dissolved their totally gross bodies right out of their host's ear. Don't ask me for the specifics. I'm a go-in-and-beat-em-up kinda girl, not a sit-down-and-think-about-this-rationally kinda girl so I don't really know what it did. I do know though that we had some major cleanup problems. 

For example, the Taxoons, huge, cannibalistic worms that were voluntary hosts. They weren't exactly thrilled that we'd destroyed their masters. In the end, we'd shoved them all on a ship and set it back to the Taxoon home world. Or so we said. I won't say exactly where we sent them. But just think Journey to the Centre of the Sun. I guess you'd count that as one of our worse moments. We'd got the Hork-Bajir to their hidden valley that the Ellimist had provided and the voluntary human hosts said they'd just go quietly back to a normal life. And that was exactly what we were trying to do. No-one, not even the human-controllers, knew that the ones who'd freed them was us. Ax, Elfangor's brother who we'd rescued, and Alloran, otherwise known as Visser Three the only Andalite ever to be a controller, were in a secret government installation and Ax had spun some story about all of us dying in the explosion we'd set to destroy the mother ship. It was so simple. No-one knew. We were free. We were normal. So why couldn't I shop? It was probably because, though I don't know how you see it, but a girl who can turn herself into a grizzly bear and an elephant isn't exactly normal. But I guess I knew that the real answer was that I was bored. Bored. Yeah, bored. Basic teenage boredom when you have too much homework and there's nothing good on the TV. Except that I didn't want to watch the TV, I wanted to fight something. Jake had once said to me that I was hooked to the war and that if it ever ended I'd miss it. I'd known that I liked to fight. But miss it? No way. Well I did. I'd shopped when we were fighting but maybe it was almost like we were just trying to cling to normalcy and look as though we were normal to our families. 

Now, this was all we had. Me and my shopping. Marco and his computer games. Cassie and her animals. Jake and his basketball. Tobias and his.... mice? Tobias was a hawk. He was probably the second reason that I couldn't get into shopping. He'd avoided me since we'd won, not wanting to answer my question of why he won't stay human full-time. He'd been given his morphing powers back and he'd always had the excuse that he wanted to carry on with the war and that he was no good to us fully human. What was his excuse now? I mean, come on! You kinda want the guy you love to be able to sit through Titanic without having to get all feathery. I noticed Tom in the distance. My cousin. Jake's brother. Former controller. He was with some friends, they'd all been controllers and they all seemed like they were laughing that little bit too loudly and smiling that little bit too much. They'd had it bad. They were starting to recover. He noticed me and gave a little wave. I smiled back and it hit me. For the past three years I'd been watching Tom. If he answered the phone I'd been weird with him, I'd followed him and I'd tried to save his life as an animal many times and yet... to him I was still nothing more than his little cousin. 

Nothing had changed. Tom was slowly becoming his old self with maybe a few scars to show. All the controllers were accepting what they'd done because they hadn't been themselves. We had been ourselves. Every single atrocity we performed was done by us. Not by some alien. Nothing had changed. Except us. And we weren't supposed to have. I was fed up. So I just went home. As always I avoided the construction site and wandered the long way round lost in deep thought. I looked up at the sky and saw a hawk fly over and for an instant his red tail feathers were outlined by the sun. Tobias. I don't know how I knew I just did. There were probably hundreds of red-tails flying around but not many banked a sharp U-turn when they noticed me. 

I shook my head up at him as he sailed the thermals away. All I wanted to do was talk to him but he knew, and I knew, that the inevitable question would come up and he didn't want to answer it. I slammed my fist into the tree trunk next to me in frustration and then smiled innocently at the mother wheeling her two babies by rather quickly. Oh well. I finished my somber walk home whilst nursing my bruised hand. I could hear my sisters yelling at each other as I got closer to the front door and opened it in time to hear my mum telling them both to shut up. I vaguely smiled. Now that was normal. My mum looked up in surprise as I walked in. "Oh hi, honey." She looked down at my empty hands quizzically "I thought you'd gone shopping." 

"I had." I replied, a touch grumpily. She dropped her eyes back down and carried on with her work. "Hey, Jordan, Sara." I mumbled as I walked through the living room. They nodded acknowledgment but as I started to walk out Jordan jumped up and started to walk with me. 

"Melissa called." She said like she wanted to say more. 

"Uh-huh." I said not really listening. 

"Do you think you'll get to talk to her dad?" Jordan blurted out. That stopped me straight in my tracks. Melissa's dad was Vice-Principal Chapman, and had been a high-ranking controller. It was also public knowledge that he' been a voluntary host. I took Jordan by the shoulders and stared straight into her eyes. 

"He did it for his daughter, so don't you dare say a word to him." My voice had taken on it's threatening quality. A tone I'd had to use way too often and I backed away from her sub- consciously. Jordan stared at me with a mixture of fear and curiosity. 

"Rachel? Are you okay?" I glanced down and for one moment I just wanted to say everything. I looked down at her innocent face and I knew I couldn't tell her what I'd done but I knew I couldn't lie either. 

"No, Jordan, I'm not okay." 

"Why what's wrong?" She asked, concerned. I couldn't tell her anything. 

"Boy trouble." I mumbled. It was the half-truth anyway. I just didn't tell that the boy in question was half-bird. I ran upstairs before she could ask anything else or tell me to talk to mum. My bedroom seemed like a nice sanctuary to run to. My gaze wandered to my message board and I skim read a couple of the quotes. They were about battle and about enemies. My gaze traveled to the bottom of the board where a few notes still clung, dusty and old, about being a good person and treating those you love well. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I quickly blinked them away, that wasn't me, or if it was it was the me that I kept locked away. I threw myself face down on my bed and hugged my Bobo bear. I sat up for a moment and stared at him. His arms had been wrenched off a bit ago and hastily sewn back on. Even my teddy bear had been affected by the war. Now that, as Marco would say, is insane. 

I picked up the phone to ring Melissa and put it back down again instead flicking on the TV. It landed on CNN and it was talk of the war again, obviously. They said that the Andalites had been contacted and that Ax and Alloran were to be picked up soon. I'd never been great friends with Ax, like Tobias and Cassie and even Jake, but I'd liked the blue guy and it was kind of upsetting to think we'd never get to see him again and tease him about his obsessive pride. I flicked the TV off and picked up the phone again. 

Hitting speedial I listened to the ringing until a voice said down the line. "Hello?" My throat constricted and I had to whisper to myself over and over in my head , human, human. He sounded just the same as he had when he was yeerk. 

"Erm, hi. Melissa? I mean, is Melissa there please?" I said, babbling. 

"Of course. Rachel, right?" I mumbled an answer and started to breathe again when he walked away from the phone. I heard muffled yelling and the stamp of feet heading towards the phone. 

"Rachel!" Melissa practically yelled. "I'm so glad you called." She said getting suddenly serious. 

"Yeah well, you phoned me so I phoned you." I said. We hadn't exactly been talking and when I had found out about her parents, well, you know. 

"Look, I kinda wanted to apologize for how I've been treating you. But, you know, my dad and my mum..." she trailed off. 

"Look, it's fine. I mean, I've been weird to you, too." 

"Yeah, but you've been weird to everyone." 

"Hey!" I said not really mad. 

"Well, that's what people say." she sounded uncomfortable, again, "I'll see you in school tomorrow?" 

"Sure. Bye." I hung up and leant back on the bed feeling slightly annoyed. A school day. And not even a mission to look forward to. I always walked to school normally meeting Cassie at the end of my street. So that's what we did. "Hi." I said. It felt good to speak to an Animorph friend. I mean, Cassie has been my best friend forever but to speak to someone who actually had an idea of what I was going through was good. 

"Hey." she said and then glanced at me, concerned, "How you doin'?" 

"Dealing." I said. She looked at me. "Barely. I mean, are you okay?" I needed to hear someone else was in as bad a shape as me. 

"Dealing." she laughed. "But no, seriously, none of us are okay. Jake misses the whole leader thing and the responsibility. I mean, to go from worrying about which one of us he may have to send to die to worrying about Homer running in front of cars, is harsh. Marco still misses his mum and I think in some vague way, that he won't admit to, he misses his paranoia." 

I laughed. "Yeah, Marco was pretty big on that whole deal. What about you?" I said returning to my original question. 

"Me? I'm definitely not supposed to miss it, am I?" I looked at her. 

"And we're not supposed to be able to turn into animals." She smiled. 

"I miss helping people and knowing that I'm doing something good even when I'm doing something bad." We were at the school and we wandered in each lost in thought. Cassie spotted Jake in the distance and he jogged over Marco trailing behind. Jake glanced up at me and asked the silent "How you doing?" question. I gave the silent "I'm fine" answer. He leant down and gave Cassie a kiss on her cheek and I just wished Tobias was there. Marco mumbled "Hi." and then burst out laughing. We all stared at him. 

"We survive the war and now he cracks up." I laughed. He shook his head and came back, still laughing. 

"I was about to say the group thing was majorly bad for security." We all smiled. We each looked at each other and mumbled excuses to where we had to go. Even Jake and Cassie split up. It felt good for a while to be with people who knew you so well but after a while you just wanted to be with people you wanted to get to know again and who only knew the fake you. I was pushing past people mumbling "Hi." to most of the guys in my year when I ran straight into someone at my locker. 

Some guy. I was about to yell and do the whole psycho Rachel thing as I just couldn't be bothered with anyone when I stopped and however hard I tried no insults came out. He glanced down at me and with a soft, dreamy voice mumbled two words. "Marac Dalost." Marac Dalost. Now you're probably thinking the guy's either insane or a really weird exchange student but you kinda have to know what these two words mean to understand the gravity of this situation. Marac Dalost is an obscure, old Andalite ritual that allows you to keep two natural forms. 

You perform the morph and then at exactly the two hour point you half morph into the other form. You had to form very clear, very separate pictures of the two forms in your head and then if you perform it right it means that you can stay in one of these forms for over two hours, morph to the other form for over two hours and still be able to morph to all the other animals in the two hour limit. Hardly anyone ever actually performed the ritual as it was very dangerous and could mean that you became trapped as some warped hybrid. Ax had told us about it months ago and Tobias had passed over trying it saying that he didn't want to get trapped as anything worse. But that was months ago. I stared up at him. 

"You did it?" I whispered. He slowly nodded confirmation. I grabbed his shirt and wrenched him into one of the empty classrooms. "Why now?" 

He shrugged "I never wanted to stop fighting and I knew I'd always have you as long as we were in the fight but now.." He stopped for a moment staring at me. "I thought I'd lose you." I couldn't stop smiling. I flung my arms up around his neck and kissed him for one long moment the bell interrupting. He looked deep into my eyes. 

"I have to dash." 

"Stay." I whispered. 

"No. Questions and all that." I suddenly thought of something. 

"Tobias." He stopped and turned. "Where are you living?" I suddenly dreaded the answer. 

"The meadow, a house, somewhere else?" He spread his hands wide and shrugged before leaving the room. He'd said somewhere else like he didn't know where. But I knew Tobias, he knew exactly where "somewhere else" was. And I didn't think I wanted to know. The classroom began to fill with kids and Cassie ran up to me and grabbed my arm. 

"Was that Tobias?" She asked not sounding like she believed herself. 

"Yeah." I replied not really concentrating. 

"What was he doing here?" Jake. I snapped back. We sat in our seats. Cassie next to me. Jake and Marco in front. 

"You won't believe it." I said and started to tell them. They seemed happy and I tried to as well but we all know each other way too well. They knew something was wrong. 

"Shouldn't you be really happy right about know?" 

"Something's up with it. He's not telling me something." 

"We'll go talk to him after school." Jake said. 

"In the barn." Marco added hastily. We all looked at each other. We were all glad we had some action to take that involved weirdness. I don't think any of us could just have gone home and done homework or hung out at the mall without the awful feeling of finality. The finality that it was no longer an act and that we had nothing better to do. We started to walk from school to Cassie's barn in different directions and then saw each other outside, realized what we were doing and sheepishly began to walk together. We tried the average small talk to begin with but no-one was buying it. "How's things with Tom?" I asked Jake. He scuffled the floor with his feet. 

"Pretty much getting back to normal." We fell silent for a few seconds. And then suddenly Jake started speaking again. "And it's driving me crazy! It's like here we are trying to save his life for the last three years and yet he doesn't even care." 

"Erm Jake, he doesn't actually know. It's real hard to do the whole supporting deal when he doesn't even know what's up with you." Marco pointed out, rationally. We all kind of nervously giggled. 

"I know but don't you just want people to know?" We all stared at him. In truth, it had been eating away at all us. 

"It was your idea not to tell anyone, Jake." I said. He looked at me. 

"I know but I didn't think it would be so.. so.." 

"Frustrating?" Cassie offered. We all stared at her in surprise. "What? Aren't I allowed to want to be treated a little differently?" 

"That's it, isn't it? All we wanted was to be treated the same as we always were but we're not the same as we always were." Marco nearly yelled. We all stopped. I noticed a hawk circling above. 

"Hey, Tobias." I said, smiling. 

"What!" cried Marco in mock anger. "Was the Bird-boy eavesdropping?" 

{With your big mouth it was hard not to, Marco.} Tobias shot back, laughing. Cassie asked the question that was bugging all of us. 

"Em, Tobias? If you can be human full-time now, then, em, why aren't you?" 

{I had nothing better to do than fly. But, em, why are you guys heading for the barn? We don't exactly have any battle strategies to plan.> We all looked at each other sheepishly. They didn't say anything and stared at me. I sent them all an annoyed look. 

{Rach?} Tobias said, laughing. {I can see every look you make.} So I sent him an annoyed look. 

"Well, you see we were coming to talk to you." I said. 

{And you didn't want to let the barn go.} 

"What do you mean?" Jake asked. 

{I mean you want to pretend that our lives are still in the total weirdness territory} Marco looked up at him. 

"We're still talking to a bird. We are definitely still weird." We all laughed again and carried on walking to the barn. Tobias fluttered up to the rafters and stared down at us. 

{Why did you want to talk to me?} It was time for Jake to do the questioning. 

"First, to congratulate you." He shot a glance at me. "Second, when you were talking to Rachel you mentioned "somewhere else". We know you Tobias. We know that you know where this place is." 

"And don't mess with us." I warned. {Then, I won't. You're right. I do know where else I might go. I'm Elfangor's son so..} I knew, straight away I knew. And so did the others. 

"The Andalites." Cassie murmured. 

{I know it's weird, but I have grandparents there and I can hang with Ax. Okay, that is majorly weird. I have alien grandparents, but still.} We all looked up at him. {Look, I don't know! We don't even know how long it will take for them to come. But during that time I might decide to go with them.} He flew off then and left us all to look at each other a bit confused. 

"Wow." Marco spoke for us all. 

We all sat and stared at each other. Tobias... leaving. It made my heart ache just thinking about it. We'd all miss him but I, well I, I loved him and it wasn't like he was leaving for college and moving away. You can do the long distance thing when you're talking miles but light-years? I don't think so. "I'd better get going." Marco said and stood up. We all agreed and made our way out of the barn. Jake went to kiss Cassie and I just had to turn away. Cassie got to stand right there with the boy she loved. The boy I loved was probably hunting a mouse and now might even be leaving the planet! 

I started to walk ahead of the guys who were absent-mindedly distracting themselves from the issue at hand. I veered off from them about ten minutes later and yelled goodbye. Further back than I was they raised their hands in acknowledgment and Jake yelled that he'd call me later. I mumbled greetings to my mum and sisters who were sat around the table eating their dinner. My mum looked up, obviously annoyed. It was only then that I noticed my aunt, uncle, Tom and even my dad also sat around the table. Oh, yeah. Big family dinner. Even my dad was there to celebrate Tom being back. I was dead. But then again, so was Jake. That cheered me up. "Hey, everyone!" I said as cheerfully as I could muster. 

"Rachel." my mum said, her tone on the edge of yelling if we didn't have company. 

"Where's Jake?" my aunt, obviously just as annoyed. As an answer to her question there was a knock on the door. 

"I'll get it!" I said, dashing from the room. Jake was stood on the doorstep, looking like he'd just ran straight from his house which he probably had done. "We are so dead." I mouthed to him before leading him to the dining room. "Here's Jake!" I said with way too much enthusiasm. The adults all looked at us with disapproving glares as we-oh-so-causally sat down. 

"So where were you two?" my uncle asked. 

"Just hanging." Jake replied. 

I wasn't in the best state at the moment. I'd managed to be a little normal so that I wouldn't get grounded but all I really wanted now was to just go and think about Tobias. His floppy blond hair, his dreamy, brown eyes, his beak... hang on! His beak? Jake was nudging me but I couldn't stop thinking about his beak. Weird. I mean, his beak? 

"Rachel!" It was Jordan yelling. I jumped out of skin and looked as though I'd been paying attention. "Mum asked you a question." 

"Em, well.." I looked around for help. Tom smiled at me and answered the question. 

"No, Rachel never went to a Sharing meeting, neither did Jake for that matter." Jake shrugged. 

"Guess we're just not group people." Jake said smiling. I was starting to drift again when I heard something. The sound of a ship. A spaceship. Tom leapt up. 

"The Andalites!" He raced out of the house and everyone ran to follow. Jake and I sat and stared at each other. We both knew what was going through the other's mind. Tobias would have to make his choice sooner than expected. And I was beginning to make my own. We walked slowly out of the house and saw the Dome ship coming to rest over a large field near the school. Actually, I think it was the football field. Obviously, the whole town sped over and we saw helicopters coming to rest near the school. We lived nearby so we got pretty good seats. 

I looked at Jake. He was staring up at the ship and at some of the helicopters. The noise from the rotar-blades was horrendous. "I going with him!" I yelled. Jake turned to me. We both knew what Tobias would choose. I thought he was going to yell at me, tell me not to be stupid. Instead, though, he nodded his head and leaned closer to me. 

"So am I." I jerked up in surprise. I knew we'd all been feeling the same way about the war being over but I'd thought that I was the only one bored enough to fly off into space. Being the only one with love for Tobias a contributing factor. I stared at him for a moment and then smiled and flung my arms around his neck. 

"I see you both decided the same thing I did." Marco's voice came from nowhere and we span to meet him like we would an enemy. He laughed at our response, holding up his hands in mock surrender. 

"What do you mean?" I asked curiously. 

"He means we're all going." Cassie said as she walked over to us. I was staring at them in shock. 

"But why?" Jake looked at me and the others seriously. 

"Because we can't stop helping people. We can't go back to worrying about homework instead of lives. It just doesn't work." I saw Tobias overhead. {Glad to have you guys with me.} he laughed and we all smiled up at him and then he said in private thought-speak {Very glad, Rachel.} I smiled up at him and looked at the others as Tobias zoomed out of the sky and morphed to human in some bushes. 

He trotted over and I managed to wipe the smile off my face to say, seriously. 

"Now we just have to tell our parents." 

"That we're leaving this planet to fight these aliens that we've been fighting for the last three years by turning into animals?" Marco asked. 

"Duh." I replied. 

"I don't see what they'd be bothered about." We all looked at each other and then at the group of people watching the spaceship. 

"We are so going to be grounded." murmured Cassie. 

"Then how are we going to fly away?" Marco, obviously. We pushed our way through the crowds yelling "Excuse me please" (Cassie) and "Move!" (me). We got a few complaints but no-one was really paying attention to us with them all too busy staring up at the large spaceship. Our families were near the front and Tom was staring at the emerging Andalites in awe of what he knew they could do. Chapman had the same look on his face as did most of the others we knew were ex-controllers. 

My mum noticed me and signaled for us to join them. I ignored her for the moment. It was strange, all our parents had somehow got grouped together like they were waiting for them to tell us something. 

"This is all great but how exactly are we going to tell them we're going?" Jake asked responsibly. We stared at the heavy security surrounding the area and gulped. 

"We could morph something small and sneak through to talk to Ax." Cassie suggested. 

"Or we could morph something big and not get stepped on?" I offered. 

"Oh, the bash-em-up approach, classic Rachel." Marco added helpfully. Tobias coughed and said; 

"Or I could just use my thought-speak to talk to Ax." We stared at him. 

"Thought-speak?" Jake asked. 

"Hey, I'm in morph, aren't I?" He turned to the front, "Em, what do I say?" Jake started to say something when the Andalites booming thought speak interrupted us. 

{Alloran!} happiness, that was a new one for the Andalites. Alloran walked forward uncertainly, he had been a controller for a long time and it was going to be doubly hard for him to get back to normal. 

{I am honoured to be able to return home.}Alloran managed to say. 

{And this must be Elfangor's brother.} I stifled a giggle, we all knew how much Ax hated that. Ax nodded, a very human motion, in acknowledgment. {And where are these humans that had the morphing powers that stopped the invasion. Though it did break one of our laws they must be great warriors to have won this battle and we do wish to congratulate them.} 

A murmur rose up among the crowd. People glanced at the adults around them and never even looked our way. That proved the insanity of the situation: five kids beat the Yeerk invasion force. No-one would believe that! 

{Ooops} Ax mumbled. Another very human phrase. {You see, Prince Pennah, the humans didn't actually want anyone to know what had happened and I told their government that the other forces were Andalite and that they were killed in Mother Ship explosion.} The crowd grew silent at this exchange. Even if the Andalites left now there would never be any peace until the mystery of who they were was solved. 

{So, they do not want to be known. But I believed one of them was Elfangor's son?} 

{That is correct.} Alloran seemed surprised. 

{The boy Tobias! But he showed no sign of knowing who Elfangor was!} 

{That is because he knew who you were} Ax explained. I was getting fidgety. 

"Let's just tell them Jake." I guess the crowd was quieter than I'd thought as everyone turned to stare at me. 

"Tell them what?" my aunt asked. Our families were watching us in curiosity. We stepped forward. 

{Prince Jake?} Ax asked. 

"Don't call me prince." Jake said, automatically before glancing around and realizing that everyone had heard an alien call him 'prince'. The Andalite War-Prince looked at him in surprise. 

{Children? Visser Three was stopped by five children?} He was on the verge of laughter. 

"Pretty much." Jake replied. There fell a deathly silence. Tobias stepped forward. 

"Hey Ax." Ax nodded. "I've kinda decided to come with you." Ax smiled his Andalite smile. "Oh, and I did that Marac Dalost thing." Tobias added as an afterthought. Ax ran to him and hugged him. Another very human thing, he'd hung with us for way too long. 

{Pennah, Alloran, meet Tobias, Elfangor's son.} Pennah stepped forward. 

{You performed the Marac Dalost? Congratulations. You may come with us but we must be leaving with the intelligence you gained very soon} 

"Wait!" I cried. I could feel my parents eyes watching me. "We've all decided to come." A deathly silence filled the field. Our parents were ushered into the Dome ship where they instantaneously began to yell. 

"How could you not tell us!" 

"How can you want to leave!" Jake just sat and looked at them while they ranted and raved. They very slowly began to calm down and Jake began to speak. 

"When we first met Elfangor and got our powers, that night all I wanted to do was tell Tom." he looked down at the floor. "If I had we'd all be dead, including the entire human race." They stared at us suddenly realizing what we had done. "The reason we have to leave is different for each us. I was the leader. I choice who died and who lived. I can't just back away from that. I can't go back to being normal when you have sent the girl you loved to die." He looked at Cassie. "or when you have used your cousin to threaten someone who could destroy you." He looked at me. 

"Marco?" It was his dad. Marco looked at him. We all knew Marco's main reason and we knew he was going to have a hard time saying it. 

"It's mum." he mumbled out. His dad looked confused. Marco looked up his eyes full of tears. "She's not dead, dad." His father stared in horror at his son. "She's a yeerk and I have to find her. And I just can't give up on the war either, I was security, paranoia was my game." He said trying to be funny Marco again. "I always looked over my shoulder and I can't stop doing that." 

"Cassie?" Oh, great. I was going to be last. Cassie looked at the grass on the floor of the dome and then up at her parent's concerned faces. 

"I hated the war. But we helped people. And I liked it. It felt good when you saved a life. It felt bad when you took one, but still." she looked as though she was rationalizing with herself not her parents, "And with this new weapon no damage has to be done. I can't just let someone else end it." she smiled, self-mocking, "And I love Jake." He smiled then and she moved to sit beside him, putting her hand in his. 

"Rachel?" My dad looked at me wanting to know my reason. I felt guilty saying it. Mine wasn't noble like Jake's or personal like Marco's. Mine was basically plain stupid. 

"I love to fight." It felt stupid saying it so simply, but it was the truth and it felt good to be able to say the truth. "Every battle I fight, I love it!" my voice was getting louder. "The adrenaline, the rush... " I paused and looked my dad straight in the eyes. "The killing. However much I convince myself that I hate to wage war, I don't. I can't go back to being the airhead. blonde supermodel because, as Marco likes to put it, I'm more like Xena than Cameron Diaz." I looked over at Tobias. "And I can't leave Tobias, I'm lost without him. And don't say it's some superficial crush. I loved Tobias when he was trapped as a hawk. I pretty much must love him when I loved him as a bird." 

They all stared at us. Jordan, accusing because I hadn't told her. Our parents, shocked. And Tom, he was looking at us strangely. We left three days later. It was obviously a tearful goodbye and I was hugging Sara one last time when I saw Tom beckon me and Jake over. I wandered over leaving my weeping family for a moment. He looked at us both; "I know the kind of things you did. I saw them." We knew the kind of things he meant. "I won't tell them." he said meaning our families. But Jake looked at him. 

"Maybe they should know some of the things we did. It may help them see why we have to go." Tom nodded and hugged us again. We walked off to join the others in the car they'd sent. We stared down at the Earth as it became smaller and smaller finally disappearing into the whiteness of Z-space. "The war won't last that much longer, what with the pulse and all, what then?" Cassie asked. "I mean, do we go back? Will we want to?" Tobias put his arm around my waist and I leaned my head on his shoulder before he answered. 

"Ax once told us that the Andalites wanted to be explorers, they'll probably do that. So, I guess I'll do that with them." 

"To go where no man.." 

"No woman." I corrected. 

"No-one." Cassie corrected. 

"..no-one has gone before." Marco shouted, pompously. 

"Oh, god. He's taking them to his bedroom." We all laughed. We were together. Doing what we did best. Fighting intergalactic war. We'd all realized something. We'd been saying that we'd won the war and now, speeding through space, we realized we had merely won the battle and that there was still a war to fight. But then something hit me. 

"Hey! We're going to miss the prom!" I could've bought that really cute dress from Junior Miss and those shoes and those earrings and..... 

THE END 


End file.
